The Swordbearer

The Toal, often called the Dead Captains, and their commander, Nevenka Nieroda, were the most terrible horrors the eastern sorcery had dredged from the past. They commanded a merciless sorcery uniquely their own.

They could not be killed, for they had died already, in battles ages past.

"I have to tell Father." There was no relish in Sy-men's voice, just a sad resignation.

He thinks we're living on borrowed time, Gathrid thought.

His vision of himself as a great champion dispersed before this dread new wind. It seemed silly.

The Dead Captains. Who could stand against them? Maybe a Ma-gister of the Brotherhood. Not a gimp boy from Kacalief. You're a fool, Gathrid, he told himself.

The whole crowd walked slowly up to the castle. They remained very quiet. Anyeck murmured, "I don't think I want to go to Hartog now. It would be too depressing."

"Uhm." Depression had arrived already. Symen's news was a thunderclap declaring the end of an era.

Borrowed time, Gathrid thought again. He glanced toward the border.

The day seemed normal enough. No evidence of war rode Grevening's western winds.

The Safire met them at the gate. He was an almost laughably tall, lean, craggy man. He proclaimed himself .the ugliest man alive. With the exception of Symen, his children took their looks from their mother. In her youth the Safirina had been one of the great beauties of the royal court at Katich. Twenty-five years after the fact, Gudermuth's nobility remained bemused because the Safire had wooed and wed the woman.

The Safire was a dour and quiet man. The occasions of his smiles were historical reference points.

Today he appeared more gloomy than ever. "Huthsing get a little too melodramatic, Symen?"

"Didn't say a word about them, Father. He had other things on his mind," he explained.

"That explains why the Dolvin summoned me. We'll be next. I suppose there's no time to waste.

Though Heaven knows what rush there is when you face the invincible."

Gudermuth had no realistic hope should the Mindak choose to take her. She was another of dozens of tiny, feeble states filling the continental hinterland. Ventimig-lia was, reputedly, already as vast as the Anderlean Im-perium at its greatest extent. Ahlert would swat Gudermuth down like a rude puppy. His weapons would be Nevenka Nieroda, the Toal and his sorcerer generals. And an army so vast no one could count the number of men in it.

The world was old. Its histories were layered and deep. There were living sorceries, and memories and shadows and ghosts of sorceries, dense upon every land. A man of power could stand anywhere and touch some echoed wizardry of the past. He need but have the confidence and strength to reach out and seize it.

The Mindak of Ventimiglia had the confidence, strength and will. He was hammering out an empire built of the bones of little kingdoms like Grevening and Gudermuth.

"Is it really all so hopeless?" Mitar asked. "They're men the same as us."

"It's probably worse," the Safire grumbled. "What are you doing here? Take them back to the practice field, Belthar. Gathrid. Anyeck. Why aren't you at your studies? Mhirken. Saddle me a horse."

Fifteen minutes later the Safire and his esquire departed, bound for the Dolvin's castle. Gathrid and Anyeck watched them go. "What're you going to do?" the youth asked.

"Do?" His sister seemed puzzled.

"Sure. You always figure an angle." In his sourer moments Gathrid thought Anyeck a greedy, illtempered, co

She was determined to profit from an outstanding marriage.

"Don't be so bitter. Yes. Maybe there is an angle in this. Maybe he'll listen now. For my safety."

She became thoughtful. After a while she began unrolling an implausible plot.

He loved her anyway. They were best friends. She listened to his dreams, too. And she did not laugh.

"We'd better find Plaueri. Father will check." The Safire was a methodical man.

"Wow. I'm overwhelmed." She was no more excited about education than he.

Their instructor, Mikas Plauen, was doing his Brotherhood Novitiate. The Safire had contracted his services with his Order, the Yellow.

The Brotherhood was an anomaly of the times, a non-sectarian organization which, nevertheless, displayed characteristics of a religious mystery cult. Its avowed purpose was to preserve, conserve and transmit knowledge. The lower ranks everywhere appeared as court scribes, secretaries and, as here, as instructors of the nobly-born.

At its highest levels, though, the Brotherhood formed the aristocracy of wizardry. All the great western sorcer- ers belonged, and at the very top stood several men possibly the equal of the Mindak of Ventimiglia.

There were two major Orders, the Red and the Blue, and three minor, the White, the Yellow and the Green. The minor Orders remained devoted to the Brotherhood's founding purpose.

The Red and Blue, though, had become worldly, political and contentious, always striving for control of the Brotherhood and the temporal power that mastery represented. Many an intrigue had been played between the two. The Blue Order was dominant at the moment, but the Red was making a comeback under a cu

Gathrid did not care. He couldn't untangle the political and philosophical differences between the Orders. He saw only naked power lust. For him it was enough to know that the Orders existed and that, though they supposedly shared a common purpose, sometimes contended to the point of armed confrontation.

The lesson of the day was another of Plauen's dull monologs on the Fall of Anderle. Plauen was not a skilled teacher. He could make anything boring.

"Why are we studying this stuff about the Tempter and the Twins?" Gathrid asked. "They've been dead a thousand years."

"I notice you don't complain when we study Tureck Aarant, Chrismer or one of those."

"They were heroes."

"You're interested in them. That's all. Except for Aarant, they don't have many lessons for us.

The Immortal Twins, and Grellner and Aarant, and to a secondary extent, Theis Rogala, are the ones who left a significant legacy. They made the mistakes from which we should learn."

Gathrid shook his head. Same old thing. Over and over and over again. Learn from the mistakes of the past. That was stupid. Only fools lived in the past. His father had said so.

"Pay attention, Gathrid. It's important that you two learn. Nudge Anyeck, please. She's sleeping with her eyes open. Heavens. What am I going to do? They're cretins, and I'm supposed to have them ready in time for..."

A chill crept down Gathrid's spine. There was something grim about Plauen's muttering. "In time for what, Brother?" he demanded.

"Nothing. Adulthood, I suppose. I'm sorry. You're exasperating me. I've never dealt with such stubborn students."

Gathrid became mildly embarrassed. That surprised him. Plauen's tactics usually irritated him.

Maybe it was the implication of deliberate ignorance colliding with his knowledge that he had been sabotaging the sessions.

"We don't know what Aarant, Grellner and their contemporaries were really like," Plauen said, resuming his lesson. "The stories we have now were shaped by a thousand retellings, and it's in those retellings that they've acquired their significance for us today. The characters we associate with the Brothers' War have become archetypes. Grellner brought Temptation into the Paradise of Anderle. The Immortal Twins lost I